Night watchmen

  ‘This is the BBC Breakfast News. Good evening.’

   ‘The House of Commons passed the third reading of The Hate Crimes Mental Health Bill yesterday, which will now pass to the Senate for its final Upper House reading. Commentators agree that there is little likelihood of the Upper House making any serious amendments and it is likely to go online for the People’s Assent just before the midwinter recess.

  The BBC’s Social Affairs correspondent Sylvia Kennedy has this report’:

  ‘In an almost unanimous vote, MPs passed the historic bill at a little after 4 AM yesterday. In an increasingly common pattern of crossbench unity, the Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Appointed Members backbench Public Health Alliance all spoke in favour of a measure praised by experts as ‘the beginning of the end for hate’ in Anglia.

   ‘Crossbench spokesperson for science and ethics and leader of the Appointed MPs, Victor Jarvis, thanked the House for supporting the popular bill: “No longer will the mentally ill peddle hate and create division and strife by lawless media access and spread the poisons of bigotry and pseudoscience. While committed to preserving the sacred British tradition of free speech, this House has just taken an historic step towards bringing our law in line not only with our European partners but also with the American government’s bipartisan Health and Security Administration. We now expect our own health professionals, in conjunction with the civil police, to move swiftly after the expected Assent to stamp out the terrorist cells that have been ruthlessly abusing the media to spread their message of intolerance and murder. This is a gentle dusk for the peoples of our islands and we look forward to the peace and health that ending hate speech will bring.”

   ‘The Bill was draughted on the recommendation of the all-party Plenipotentiary Commission into Violence after the so-called ‘Survival Riots’ of last summer when over thirty public servants, leadership cadre and diurnal support staff were murdered in terrorist dawn raids against private homes and health facilities throughout Anglia, Scotland and the Shared Sovereignty Counties of Ireland. Right-wing militia and religious fundamentalist terror cells were universally blamed for the violence and though the civil police and Health Service Security responded effectively and promptly, both pulsed and unpulsed lives were tragically lost.

   Then-Prime Minister, Douglas Hart, made legislative reform the centerpiece of his Resignation Speech before he went to the country to ask for a new electoral mandate. Although he was defeated after a hotly contested count amid widespread accusations of server tampering and poster intimidation, his successor had offered a more flexible proposal - for a Plenipotentiary Commission - which he mooted immediately after Hart’s funeral. Assent was granted by an unprecedented landslide. The final draught of the Commission’s findings was introduced to Parliament barely a month ago. The swift passage of the Bill through committee and two reading stages by members of both parties: elected and appointed; backbenchers and Ministers, pulsed and unpulsed in each House has been praised by observers as an epochal show of unity in the face of unforgivable violence by anti-health, anti-reform extremists determined to return to the days of division, disease, hatred and daylight timekeeping.’

  ‘Meanwhile, European aid workers came under intense terrorist attack across North Africa and the Middle East again yesterday; from the Anglo/Spanish area of anti-infection operations in Western Sahara and Morocco to the Turkish/German aid cities in Syria and Egypt. In a joint communiqué the Secretary General of the United Nations, Victor Jent and EU Health Commissioner-General Sigfrid Jaeger tonight announced that voluntary codes of co-operation between local civil and military authorities had served their purpose but must now be replaced by a more robust and flexible regime to overcome the scientific challenges and to defeat anti-health terrorism across the region.

   ‘Herr Jaeger announced a detailed plan to “- eradicate infection and those who harbour it throughout this deeply troubled and strategic part of the world. Air, land and sea elements of the Eastern Mediterranean Joint Health Command will move into Infected and Infested areas of the Northern Galilee Quarantine Zone of the Lebanon Directorate. Operations against Infected holdouts in the Samaria/Al Quds Demilitarized Zone have already begun under authority granted to the UN by the Cape Town Treaty of ’43; starting with an anti-virus bombardment by medium- and long-range missiles from naval assets and Egyptian launch platforms. Disinfection-in-detail is expected to follow shortly once it has been established that it is safe for ground troops to be deployed against any remaining criminal gangs.”

  ‘And finally, it’s good news for cricket fans.

   Panhaemon Pharmaceuticals announced in York tonight that its sponsorship of the Floodlit Championship will be renewed at the end of the season; bringing much-needed security to the finances of the sport in Northern Anglia for a further three years. Newly-appointed Panhaemon Chairman, Seward Jennings, explained: “Panhaemon plc is proud to announce a boost for the region’s favourite game. Starting in May this year, the site of our former filtration plant and regional headquarters near Skipton will be redeveloped as a Cricket Academy and multi-pitch sports village where the cream of Anglia’s cricketing youth will mix with and be tutored by the best players from the Northern Hemisphere, as well as training alongside the best of the Southern Hemisphere’s disinfected veterans. The first clearance work at Skipton has already begun thanks to our architects’ timely completion of the Minster Remodelling Project and our recent relocation to our new corporate headquarters in Constantine House in the heart of the Shambles Redevelopment. On a personal note I’d like to pay tribute to my predecessor - who was also my mentor, friend and sire - Colin Johnson. The Cricketing Academy was his personal passion and it seems only proper that the place of his tragic death in the chemical fire earlier this year should be the location of his dream come true and also bear his name. The loss of the Pacific and Trans-Himalayan Regions to infection and insurrection need not be more than a temporary lull in cricket’s renewed rise to global status, and CJ would no doubt be overjoyed to know that his vision and industry will surely play a large part in the sport’s resurrection after the loss and suffering of the Changes.”

And taxes

And taxes

   “You be careful and play nicely with the other children today, even Diane and Greta,” her mother ordered firmly at breakfast time.

   Jasmine looked up form her plain sugared rice pops – the cocoa crop having not yet recovered from the South American round of the changes – and asked; “Why, Mummy? In junior school you always told me to stick up for myself when people were mean to me.”

   Her mother sighed theatrically; a safer response by far than her honest reaction which would be to scream aloud and go out to burn down certain buildings immediately. How to explain it, Alison? Better still, how to avoid the issue altogether and keep the child safe by keeping the truth secret? Can’t hide it all, and the best lie contains some truth. “Jas, it’s because it’ll help Daddy if you’re nice to those girls.”

   “But why?” Jasmine scowled, her twelve years full of integrity and righteousness. “I don’t see why having my stuff stolen’s okay. You always told me it’s wrong to steal.”

   No longer, dear; nowadays it’s actually just somebody else’s privilege. Careful, Annie. “You’re very lucky because a letter we got today says you’ll be going to a new school.

Daddy hasn’t read it yet because he’s working nights, but Diane’s mother just rang me to say she’s going to the new one in Richmond, and I expect Greta will too because her father works for the Government.” The cold-hearted sow had actually phoned to gloat. “Our girls will still be together in September, Anne. Won’t that be nice? They’re becoming fast friends and it’d be such as shame to split them up.” “a pity if your mouse-like offspring escapes my bitch Diane’s claws”, is what she truly meant. Collaborationist tart. Not that we aren’t collaborating in our own way, too. The thought of Jasmine having to go into Rational Education and risk ending up in a shunt shop for the rest of her life was too much to bear. Better get it over with, Annie. Daughterly disillusion and hatred, here we come. “Jas, it’s just that our kind of people have to stick together now that things have changed. You won’t remember it much, but people used to be allowed to visit whoever they liked and befriend anyone willy-nilly, even if it wasn’t sensible. For your own sake you’re going to have to accept the way things are. Not everyone will be allowed in the Academies and lots of your nice friends will be going to the Richmond one. If you’re nasty to Dirty and Gloomy and they tell their parents and they decide it’s Daddy’s fault somehow, then… Well there’re worse things than having your lunch stolen.”

   “Like taxes, Flower,” said Brian stumbling in through the kitchen door, red-eyed and weary from work.

   He slung a briefcase onto the breakfast bar, covering the Academy letter and hurried over to kiss Jasmine on the forehead and wrapped his arms around Anne. They were silent and unmoving for long moments as a stony-faced Jasmine glared at her mother. Then Brian pulled himself away and reached into a cupboard above the breakfast bar. Moving aside a block of ageing baked beans cans still priced in the old currency, he pulled out two mobile phones – clunky and old-fashioned looking. “These are for you, and I want you both to carry them all the time. Flower; pop yours in your satchel now. Good lass. Always leave them on and please, never switch them to mute. They’re from Uncle Keith. Now, here’s the important thing. You know Uncle Keith travels a lot and we don’t get to see him very much, right?”

  Jasmine nodded casually but Anne became very still.

   “So, when he’s in the village he hasn’t got much time to visit us and I want you both to drop whatever you’re doing - no matter how important it is - and go straight to his house. Let yourselves in with the key he keeps behind the name plate.

   If you’re at school Jasmine, just pretend you’re feeling sick and ask them to call Mummy to fetch you (not to call me – like as not I’ll be busy when Keith phones you), so we can all meet as soon as possible. That’s why I don’t want you to set it to mute, Jasmine. Don’t worry about it ringing during lessons. Mummy and I will sort that out with the teachers before you go back.” He lifted Jasmine’s chin and gazed at her. “Promise me you’ll do it, Flower. Uncle Keith is part of this family and it’s important that we see him as soon as he lets us know he’s back. Okay?”  

    Anne nodded and Jasmine patted her father’s slightly shaking hand. “Okay, Daddy. I’ll do that. This is a grown-up thing, isn’t it?”
   “Yes Flower, it is. You’ll understand when you get older.” If. He meant, but did not say, “if.”

   Jasmine pattered away to get her raincoat, hat and ID.

   “You’re thinking of sailing away in the Princess, Brian?” Anne asked, clutching folded arms to her chest.

  “Not the boat, love. But Keith will visit soon. Perhaps even tonight or tomorrow morning. Do send him my love and go with him. You’ll want to pack your bags today, just in case.”

   “Brian, what’s it about? Don’t they trust you at work anymore? Is it because of Professor Milner?”

  “No, it’s not that, exactly. I think they think I’m okay. But one way or another I might not be able to stay at work much longer.” 

    His wife smiled. “Is it the taxes, Brian? Is that why you want to get away? The rumour at work is that even for the managerial caste, they’re going to increase them to a litre a month.” 

Night watchman

   Professor Milner’s death weighed upon me as a frightened secretary ushered me down into the Chairman’s office: too late now to drive my permitted car like hell for the coast with Annie and Jasmine and sail Sea Princess to the Safety Zones of Europe. Jutland, perhaps; or Corsica.

   In earlier decades the Chairman’s moonlike hail-fellow-well-met countenance would have sported a monocle and cigar. Tonight the clubbable face smiled above an open collared casual shirt; his light bulb head fringed by a toilet seat crescent of thinning hair. If they could truly read minds I’d be dead by now, I thought. Or worse.

  “Come in Robbins, old boy. You don’t need an invitation,” Naughtie growled across a desk bereft of the previous chairman’s Newton’s Cradle and adorned instead with a Rubik’s cube like some literary land-mine. Cute. “Sorry to call you in from annual leave old chap but this Milner business needs putting to bed double quick. See here - oh, do sit down man. “Sit” I said. I don’t… Well, of course I do, but I mean to say I intend you no harm. We’re all in this together and have our duties and it’s really just the same as it always was. We put in a day’s work, take the pay and go home safe and sound to our families.”

   Consider the alternatives if you don’t, Robbins, ‘old boy’, I interpreted. Damn him.

   Too late for that, too. The banter was all Battle of Britain fighter pilot’s safely returned from stonking the Hun but this thing was Twenty-First Century managerialism incarnate. We on the Lunatic Fringe had believed and blogged endlessly that publicinterest.org.uk (motto: “Exceeding beyond belief”)was a communist front importing Marxism into the newsrooms, schools and town halls of Britain via influence peddling and entryism: leveraging European Union health-and-safety directives and environmentalism as the vectors of the disease of unfreedom; English ACORNs. We had been dead wrong. Now most of us weren’t even wrong.

  “See here Brian,” the Chairman went on, waving an ostentatiously ceramic paperknife over a Security report into the Professor’s death, “We have a huge hole in the T.O. because of the Professor’s suicide. Injecting haemotoxin into one’s Nobel Laureate arteries: such a waste. His talent will be missed. The shareholders coveted his research long before its publication forced us to scrap our timetable. Milner is chiefly responsible for where we are today; all at sixes and sevens, rushing around half a century ahead of schedule. What I need to know now is if you or anyone else in Human Resources had any inkling about the Professor’s state of mind or his intentions.” It had been called Personnel Management back when I took my degree. I hate the new title and beleive it’s one of theirs; a part of the drip, drip, drip subversion of hitherto free peoples towards Mankind’s newfound status as property.

   Be careful, lad, it’s not England any more. These days the phrase ‘human rights’ refers to cargo manifests, auctioneers’ lists and bills of sale. “Mister Naughtie, we had no idea. Our records have been kept current and thoroughly cross-referenced since 9/11 when the Company took on more defence contracts. The scientists just don’t impinge into HR territory very much. Mostly it’s squabbles about parking spaces or when employment law obliges us to order them on statutory leave. But then they simply log on from home and work the centrifuges remotely.” The Company had constructed automated laboratories under the new Administration Wing. If Al-Qaeda  or a revanchist Russia had bombed it the probability was high that the filtration plants would have continued unhindered – which was probably why our secret owners had instructed their puppet powers-that-be to design the factory back in 2003.

   “I’m placing a great deal of trust in you Brian, and hold you personally responsible for the welfare of our research staff. Observe carefully and if anyone shows the slightest sign of trouble report him immediately. The switchboard’s manned 24/7 and emails to treason@ go straight to Security here in the Basement. We’ll respond without delay.” They can’t phone or Skype but they can operate keyboards. “Don’t be so glum. This is promotion to Non-executive Director. You’re respected by the Shareholders, our partners and other stakeholders. So much so that we’re contemplating freelancing you to work the day shift permanently and see your lovely daughter at seven o’clock every evening.” Which meant she’d soon be attending an Academy where the hostage children of the janissary caste learn to administrate their fellow humans’ lives as valuable, replaceable chattels.

  “Oh, and Robbins. You haven’t seen your ruffian brother lately, have you? Such talent squandered by going into the former army. We need chaps like him minding Africa now the aid budget’s been rationalised.”

   “No, sir. I haven’t seen him since before…Before.”

   “Very well then, off you go. You have much to do.”

   Outside it almost resembled the country of my birth; moonlit walls bordering asymmetrical Norman fields. Limestone houses with high roofs. Cricket pitches and pubs and the occasional origami fuselage of a downed helicopter. Burned churches and scorched and poisoned riverbanks. Gallows everywhere.

   They’d always owned the Internet but hedges make perfect dead letterboxes and three brief blue LED flashes confirmed that my family was safely evacuated. While Yorkshire is no Himalayan sanctuary or Appalachian militia camp, it is big. As I scattered a flask of garlic pollen into the air conditioning and pulled on cricketer’s body protection and high-impact polymer helmet I glimpsed the Management car park where dark-windowed BMWs stood in oil from the auxiliary generator tanks leaking towards time delay fuses.

   I handed traditional ash wood cricket stumps to each of the others drifting in through the Company gym: we’d give Naughtie stakeholders indeed.

   I hefted a steel-tipped stump and prayed (without truly hoping) that I wasn’t promoting myself from Management’s Flavour of the Month straight to Chef’s Special.